The calm from moments ago washes away with the water, swirling down the drain, taking me with it. Before I realize I’ve moved, I’m tucked into the corner, my legs drawn tight, my head buried against my knees.
I begin to cry.
At first, it’s emotionless, confusing tears, but slowly, the ache lets itself be known.
The shame seeps in.
And the guilt is nearly too much.
For weeks now, as I told the doctor, I’ve been silently screaming to remember what I’ve forgotten by blocking out what I knew, because what I knew was too painful and what I didn’t, I was desperate for.
So I pushed it all away, the good, the bad, and the sad.
The precious.
A sob racks through me, and I give into it.
I let it consume me.
Alone in the corner of the shower, I cry for all the things I’ve tried to force from my mind, but ache within me every day, nonetheless.
I cry for the child I lost, who I can hardly bring myself to acknowledge because the agony and loss it brings is unbearable. Downright devastating.
Being a mom is what I want most in the world and here I am, too weak to even think about the little life that’s no more.
The door is thrown open, and Cameron’s wide eyes appear. “Oh, sister…”
Taking the towel off the counter, she quickly turns off the water, drops to her knees beside me and wraps me in it, hugging herself to me.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Today was so much fun but—” I break off in another choked sob.
“But what?”
“I don’t know!” I shout. “I don’t know what the ‘but’ is for, but I feel it. Constantly. It follows me. Every step I take the ‘but’ is right there.”
Something fucking stings and she doesn’t understand.
No one does.
Not even me.
An overwhelming sense of self-hate slips in and my shoulders coil.
“I haven’t allowed myself to think of what I’ve lost in weeks, Cameron. I pushed away the one thing I knew for certain. Who does that?!” Tears pour down my face. “Who pushes away a memory that should be treasured?”
I haven’t spoken of or permitted the smallest hint of remembrance of the child that was growing inside me. My child.
I can’t even bring myself to go near Payton’s, that’s how hard it is.
“It hurts, Cam. My bones literally feel like they’re cracking when I think of him.” I admit. “I think it would have been a him. A boy. I don’t know why.” I shake my head. “But every time I touch my stomach, or accidentally wonder about him, I feel like I’m having a heart attack.”
“It’s okay, Ari,” she murmurs.
A bitter laugh leaves me, and I swipe at my nose. “No, it’s not. You just have no idea what else to say.”
“It is okay—”
“It’s not,” I snap when I don’t mean to. “I’m just pathetic. Completely fucking pathetic.”
Panic flares behind my chest, and it swells, locking off my airway, and I start to sweat. It’s as if my brain starts flashing, all these moving pictures and words, each blurrier than the last.
I might vomit.
“I don’t want to hide from myself anymore, but I can’t do this. Sometimes I want to swallow a handful of sleeping pills and hope when I wake, everything is different.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I feel that, Cam. I won’t, but I want to. I’m helpless. I feel like a fucking fraud, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
My muscles win out and my body hangs like dead weight.
My head falls to the tile, and while my eyes are open, I see nothing.
I think I scream, but I can’t be sure.
I hear nothing.
But a loud bang has me blinking, and I find my brother standing there.
His eyes are wide and his nostrils flared. He bends, scooping me up off the floor. When he speaks, his voice cracks, “Come here, little sister.”
He lowers me to my mattress, and Cameron quickly tosses a blanket over me, dragging the towel off me from under it.
Tears roll down my face, soaking the pillow beneath me. “I can’t do this, Mason.”
My brother’s grip on my hand tightens. He holds my gaze a long moment, his chest inflating with his full breath. He licks his lips, but he doesn’t speak until my lips pull into a small, encouraging smile.
Nerves have him fidgeting, but then he sets his shoulders straight, his eyes trained on mine.
“I know you’re confused and heartbroken in ways I can’t even imagine, but I need you to know something, something I’m dead fucking afraid to say, but that needs saying regardless.” He shifts on his knees, his free hand clasping over our joined ones. “I need you to know that as much as you’re hurting right now, as much as you’ve been, that there is a man out there who is hurting just as fucking much, with every breath he takes.” I suck in a choppy breath, and my brother’s eyes gloss over. “And not for himself, but for you.” His attention falls to my stomach. “For both of you.”